Our Community Survey

Every three years we ask you how we can serve our community better.  Please take our Community Survey! Your feedback is confidential and for statistical purposes only. 

What's New

Partnerships + Funding + Community Support = Reduced Homelessness  Read about Action Emergency Shelter's integrated services

Employment & Training Winter/Spring Program Schedule

¡Aprenda El Inglés!  Learn English!  Aprenda Ingles! Free English classes start January 9th

Action Shelter plans efficiency units Gloucester Daily Times 7/31/06

Action Toy drive missing its 'Mr. Santa Claus' Gloucester Daily Times 7/10/06

Action 41st Annual Meeting Photos 6/14/06

Action housing advocacy Gloucester Daily Times,  May 22, 2006

Action Energy alternative energy programs Boston Globe 4/9/06

"Unity through English language" Gloucester Times editorial 4/14/06

Certified Medical Assistant video Medical Assistant training program introductory video 2/1/06

Click here to read more Action news.

Action, Inc.-Who we are and what we do.

This letter appeared in the Gloucester Daily Times on the Symposium page on August 25, 2001

As board members of Action, Inc., we feel called upon to explain Action's mission, particularly in light of recent comments in this newspaper about the role of human service agencies in the community and their presumed differences of approach in helping local residents.

Since 1965, Action, Inc., Cape Ann's first and only designated antipoverty agency, has sought to provide a comprehensive array of services dedicated to low-income people and working poor families, leading to economic self-sufficiency and family stability. Our goal is to establish access to opportunities through housing and income maintenance counseling and legal advocacy on behalf of those in need; through the provision of a wide range of program and service resources that impact the entire family; and through education and training opportunities. Our approach is comprehensive, addressing all aspects of a person's well being. In addition, services are coordinated with colleague agencies to be cost-effective, avoid duplication, and enhance benefits; and they are delivered with respect and dignity to promote self-esteem, empowerment and confidence in those who seek our help.

It is inaccurate, unfair and unwarranted to describe the services that Action and other human service agencies provide as a "Band-Aid" approach to social problems. We applaud all programs and people who help others so that this community is a better place to live. People face emergencies like utility shut-offs, evictions, job lay-offs, or the loss of their homes through fires and family disruptions. Families with these serious problems need to be stabilized before any of our self-sufficiency programs can help them. Basic needs must come first. It is the unique role of Action to be able not only to provide immediate help in such emergencies, but also to remain at the side of the family in need long after they have found a new home or job, or had their heat or electricity restored (often though the help of Action's Energy programs and the agency's vigorous advocacy on their behalf with fuel providers and donor resources). Last year Action, Inc. assisted over 3,000 individuals and families in need.

Helping hundreds of elders each year to remain in their own homes through comprehensive home care, while maintaining their quality of life, is scarcely a "Band-Aid." Nor is our shelter program which, along with a bed and two hot meals, provides homeless men and women with housing and job assistance, substance abuse and mental health counseling, medical treatment and case management, including follow-up to many who return to rooms and apartments of their own as well as a job. It's a difficult responsibility, but we are committed to it.

Weatherization that keeps a tenant's house warm all winter while lowering both their fuel bills and the landlord's expenses is not a "Band-Aid," any more than our complement of home buyers programs, including lead paint abatement assistance and first-time home purchase and rehabilitation loans.

Talk to the more than three hundred Cape Ann residents who have obtained new or better paying jobs though Action's state of the art career opportunity center at Brown's Mall, or the teens in our new Compass Youth program, working to continue their education and to secure jobs. Ask them if they consider the doors those programs have helped them open onto a brighter future, turning frustration and despair into hope, as "Band-Aids."

For thirty-six years Action has worked diligently on behalf of our constituency, affording low-income children and families greater empowerment and a maximum potential for achieving personal success and growth. To name but a few of our past achievements, Action lobbied for and brought day care to Cape Ann for working families when there was none here; we provided public transportation for the community during the transition between private bus services and the start of CATA. We initiated the adaptive re-use of the Central Grammar School for elderly housing, and we advocated long and hard for the rights of renters and families on public assistance when there was no other agency on Cape Ann willing or able to go to bat for them- and we still do, receiving dozens of calls a week from people facing eviction or homelessness.

Because of our close involvement with Action, we can tell you stories about so many of the Cape Ann families whose lives have changed for the better through their involvement with Action's staff and programs. We have watched and guided children who grew up in public housing go to college and enter professions; we have been there while mothers on Welfare not only went to college, but graduated from law school. Long before "Welfare Reform," we helped hundreds of families to move from public assistance to self-sufficiency and paid tuition for Welfare mothers to attend college. Some of us began our relationship with Action by being helped by the agency's caring staff to find better jobs and to become self-sufficient. Helping to implement Action's goals as members of its Board of Directors has allowed us the opportunity to give to others while ensuring the continuation of a philosophy of self-help that we deeply believe in.

Action, Inc. is much more than we have been able to describe in this short space. Action is a humane staff, a committed board, devoted volunteers and thoughtful donors. It's a place where those who come for help end up helping both themselves and others. We invite you to visit our website at www.actioninc.org where we hope you will learn more about our agency, its past achievements, its current programs - and our goals for the future.

Tone Kenney, Chairperson, Board of Directors